Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Glossing the Blogroll (Pt. 2)

Pinnocchio Theory is an excellent mix of theory-oriented writing on everything from Marx to Alfred North Whitehead to new age economics to the all-encompassing Age of Aesthetics we find ourselves operating in. What is that on the horizon?

Innovation and the New remain our highest values in postmodernity and the Age of Aesthetics, just as they were in the age of twentieth-century modernism. The categorical imperative of our productive endeavors is still to “make it new.” But the sign of this imperative has been reversed; it has flipped over from negative to positive. Modernist creation was fundamentally antagonistic: “there is no affirmation which is not preceded by an immense negation” (Deleuze). “Making it new” had avant-gardist, anti-capitalist, or at least subversive and anti-conformist connotations; it was always opposed to the standardization and repetitiveness of mass production. (Even the fascist side of modernism — as in the Italian Futurists and Ezra Pound — was anti-capitalist in this sense). But today, in a world of flexible production and lifestyle marketing, the imperative to “make it new” is enthusiastically embraced by Capital. After all, corporations themselves are now mindful of diversity, and opposed to standardization and repetitive mass production. And so they embrace a perpetual newness that is upbeat and free of antagonism. Continual “reinvention” is the watchword, both in corporate organization (the focus of Tom Peters’ interest) and in product design and marketing.

On the Silliman Blog, interfacing poetics and proprioception is the hot topic of the day. I like that it comes up in connection to Charles Olson as well. Let us say that the proprioceptive nerve centers of the poet-on-the-go anticipate the next poetic becoming in the compositional field of play...(even if it is a mouthful).

The consensual hallucinations of k-punk remind me of the most intense of the avant-pop days and their frottage with cyberpunk aesthetics ("the horror, the horror...").